by Alyssa Day
He already knew her well enough to realize she’d be furious with him for daring to meddle with her mind. But she’d needed to sleep, and he’d been close to dropping from exhaustion, entirely unable to respond to her determination that had bordered on terror.
Right. He’d done it for her sake, he silently mocked himself. Of course. Villains always demonstrated exquisite talent at self-justification. Remorse washed through him again, but he dismissed it and tried to focus on his physical realities. A bath. He needed another bath.
Though he’d bathed in the hot spring-fed pool before he’d fallen asleep, simple joy in cleanliness after so long in the Void drew him to it again. He refused to consider that the filth touched him on a far deeper level than his skin.
He would bathe and then, properly attired in some of the clothing from the trunks, he would wake her. They had much to discuss. He wanted to know everything about her. Every single detail of her life. Also, he needed to convince her to give him time.
Time to prove that he wasn’t a monster. Time to persuade her that she belonged with him.
Time to figure out for himself how he knew it to be true.
He didn’t bother to dress, except for his sword. It was as much a part of him as his arm or his eye, in spite of the terrible death it had inflicted. It was what it was, and it was his. He quietly crossed the small space between them and, crouching down beside her, he was content merely to watch her sleep.
Keely’s lustrous red hair was exactly the shade he’d seen in his original vision of her. It was flame melded with sunlight, and it was a perfect complement to the flawless golden glow of her lightly tanned skin. Her closed eyelids blocked his view of the almost-iridescent emerald green of her eyes, but his memory was happy to provide the exact shade.
She lay on her side, and one hand rested on top of the blankets. He’d removed her gloves after she’d fallen asleep, wondering why she wore them, and placed them near her. Her hand was slender, with long fingers that somehow looked sturdy and competent. Nicks and scrapes marred her skin, as though she’d done rough work quite recently. Perhaps that’s why she wore the gloves.
Archaeology. She’d said she was an archaeologist. A student of the past. He almost laughed, but trapped the sound in his throat so as not to wake her. She was a student of the past, and he was a warrior who had lived through her past. Perhaps they had been destined to meet.
This time the bitter laugh escaped. He was the bastard son of destiny; now would he turn hypocrite and bless the very fates that he’d spent centuries cursing?
“What would I surrender for you, Keely?” he murmured. “My honor? My bitterness? Perhaps even part of my soul? What is it about you that has caught me like this?”
She sighed a little in her sleep, and the sound was like a torch to lantern oil, racing through him and igniting a burning trail of fierce, almost animalistic hunger. He wanted her so suddenly and so desperately that the wanting was a physical pain.
No, he needed her. They needed her, and they would not be denied.
Stop! He shouted the word in the silence of his own mind. You cannot conquer me, although you are part of my very being.
A voice, his but not his, whispered icy menace inside him. You are wrong, Atlantean captor to my imprisoned self. I will conquer you, because you are weak. And when I gain control of our mind entirely, the woman will be mine.
The Nereid—although it was part of Justice, it was Other, and he didn’t know how else to think of that part of his soul—flashed images through Justice’s mind. A boiling torrent of sensual images, each more explicit than the one before:
Keely, naked and kneeling before him in submission, those lovely tanned hands circling his cock.
Keely’s pale limbs intertwined with his own as he pounded into her.
Keely, sprawled on silken pillows, her legs over his shoulders as he tasted her.
Keely, bent forward over his bed, as he held her lovely round breasts in his hands and drove into her from behind.
Keely, writhing in ecstasy, screaming his name as she shattered with pleasure in his arms, her slick, hot cream bathing his cock with its sweetness.
Keely. Keely. Keely.
The visions burned through him, over and over, faster and faster, until his cock hardened so painfully that he felt he must wake her and take her and make her understand how desperately he needed to be buried to the hilt in the warm, wet center of her. His hand reached out, almost against his own volition, to rip the covering from her.
Then he saw it.
The silvery tracks of the tearstains on her face. She’d been crying. Even in the hypnotically induced sleep, some part of her had known she was in danger, and she had been afraid.
She thought him a monster, and with good cause. He flung himself back and away from her, shuddering in self-loathing. He was a monster, but he would never touch her unless invited.
He’d kill himself first.
You cannot win, he told the Nereid, or perhaps merely the greedy, lusting side of his own nature. I will defeat you, or I will die trying. But I will never let you harm a single hair on her head.
Mocking laughter rang faintly throughout the cavern, or else it only existed inside Justice’s brain. He was almost unable to distinguish any difference between the two.
A single hair on her head? You like her hair, too?
As Justice ran toward the pool to immerse himself in its steamy waters and wash the erotic images from his mind, the Nereid flashed a final image: Keely wrapping the long strands of her hair around the base of his cock as she pulled him into her mouth.
He dropped his sword on the ground and stumbled as he entered the water, wondering as he fell if perhaps a warrior of Atlantis who was half Nereid would dare, for the first time in his life, to ask the Nereid goddess—or even Poseidon himself—for assistance.
He was very much afraid that his sanity might depend on the answer.
An eerie sense of apprehension curled around Keely’s dreams, tingeing them with shades of charcoal gray and burnt umber. She swam through darkened currents, battered and buffeted by oddities: a fat, wooden apple the size of a donkey, a poodle-sized wooden carving of a horse that turned and smiled at her as it swam by. A child’s wooden wagon, buoyed by the waves, floated serenely beside her, keeping pace with the speed of her swimming in spite of the flotsam that jostled it. She felt a strong compulsion to reach for the toy, but was afraid that if she lost the tempo of her strokes, she would drown.
She knew she was dreaming—was almost sure of it—but had lost any sense of reality outside of the watery dreamscape. Her only purpose was to reach the opposite shore, where she knew salvation waited.
But she didn’t know how, or why, or what it might be. Something smashed into her shoulder, and she turned her head to see a red metal tricycle, its handlebars caught in the tangles of her wet hair. Faltering, she wrenched her head to the side to release herself, and the tricycle fell behind. She turned back toward the shore she couldn’t yet see but knew was there, and the toy wagon gently bumped against her nose, as if nudging her to take it.
“But I don’t have a pocket that you’ll fit in,” she said helplessly, and—instantly—she was awake and gasping for air, bolting upright and staring around her.
Out of a dream and into a nightmare.
Memory came flooding back in waves unpleasantly reminiscent of the dream, buffeting her with the events of the previous day. Atlantis. Warriors. The dead creature . . . who’d turned out to be a man from the time of Alexander.
Justice.
She scrambled to her knees, trying to stay low and inconspicuous while searching the cavern for the wild man from yesterday’s waking nightmare. Or maybe, something whispered wistfully inside her mind, the warrior from her vision?
Instead her gaze locked onto a vision from an entirely different kind of dream. The kind of dream that ended up with her tangled in damp sheets, aching and unfulfilled, because the primal male warriors she’d sometimes s
een in her visions, when she’d touched certain artifacts from ancient civilizations, simply didn’t exist in modern times. They certainly didn’t show up in the academic offices at Ohio State.
But she wasn’t in Ohio anymore. The hard, muscled male proof of it was climbing out of the water, stark naked and dripping wet, not a dozen feet away from her. Keely had never thought of water as an aphrodisiac before, but the drops that clung lovingly to Justice’s body might qualify. They caressed him in all the places she suddenly found herself wanting to touch.
With her tongue.
She closed her eyes for a moment at her own stupidity. Now she was attracted to her kidnapper? But he’d been so careful with her yesterday, and she’d seen his bitter grief over the man’s sacrifice . . . Surely he couldn’t be . . .
She opened her eyes, unable to resist another peek. He’d lifted his arms to push the heavy weight of his wet, unbraided hair away from his face, and the movement did things to the lines of his body that should be illegal. Justice was so long and elegantly lean and muscled that it made the bodybuilders she’d seen working out in the gym at OSU seem like squat trolls in comparison. His powerful arms, the right with an intricate yet simple tattoo high up on the bicep; his strong legs; the thickly muscled chest that tapered down to lean hips and . . . oh.
Oh.
She tried to swallow through a throat gone dry as the dust in an unopened pyramid. Either Atlanteans walked around in a perpetual state of intense arousal or Justice was seriously glad to see her.
A bolt of pure, sizzling heat flashed through her, turning her good sense to a silvery coil of liquid lust in exactly the place she’d like to . . . Oh. Dear. God.
He’d caught her watching him.
Frozen, she stared into his eyes, feeling the embarrassment burn in her cheeks. Common sense and self-preservation overruled zinging hormones, though, and she shot to her feet. “Stay away from me, okay? Just . . . put on some clothes, and let’s talk like civilized human beings, er, Atlantean and human beings, now that we’ve gotten some rest and you’re, um, clean.”
He never moved or made any threatening motion, but suddenly she felt a thrill of trepidation shiver through her. Some nameless emotion burned in his eyes, changing them from darkest midnight to fiery sapphire blue. Slowly, ever so slowly, his gaze traveled from her face, down to her chest, where it lingered before continuing its perusal all the way down to her toes. The masculine arrogance and blatant possession in his gaze had her poised to run, even as her nipples swelled and throbbed in the lace cups of her bra.
No way would she respond to him. Nothing in her background or her fiercely independent personality would make her the type to be turned on by some naked, alpha-male throwback to the days when men were men and women were possessions.
Even as she told herself that, her body was turning traitor, evidently tired of lonely nights. As his gaze swept slowly back up her body, her skin tingled—oversensitized and desperate for his touch.
That tingling sensation, finally, was what snapped her out of the sensual trance he’d somehow put her in and back to logic, caution, and a little damn sense.
“Cut it out,” she snapped. “Stop staring at me like I’m the spoils of your own personal war, and get dressed. We need to talk about how we’re getting out of here, okay? Where is the exit? Where is the passageway, or the tunnel, or the super-magical Atlantean elevator that will get us the heck out of here?”
He held his hands out to the sides, palms up, as if to show her that he meant no threat. Unfortunately, the movement only highlighted the strength in his muscled arms and made her realize that, her years of self-defense classes notwithstanding, and even though he was naked and unarmed, she would be no match for him.
Well, he was naked. Not so sure about unarmed, said the previously silent evil-seductress side of her nature. That’s a pretty big weapon he’s got there.
Great. She picked now to go all multiple personality.
The sane side of her went right back to its personal agenda of scared, terrified, and pretty darn frightened, if the goose bumps traveling up her arms were any indication.
“Keely, please be calm,” he said quietly, as if soothing a wounded animal.
“I’ll be calm when you get me out of here,” she pointed out, proud of how reasonable her voice sounded, when her heart was thumping in her chest. “Not the way we got here, either. None of that ‘beam me up, Scotty,’ crap. A nice, normal tunnel. Or stairs. Stairs would be good.”
“But—”
“And get dressed!” she shouted, out of patience. “I don’t care if you look like some kind of Greek statue come to life. I want you to put your clothes back on!”
That slow, dangerous smile of his—it ought to be registered as a lethal weapon, really—spread across his face. “You think I look like a statue?”
Keely scowled at him. “Clothes. Now.”
Still smiling, he sauntered over to a pile of clothing and, not nearly quickly enough for her peace of mind, pulled on a shirt and pants. Her view of his tightly muscled behind, as he stepped into the pants, nearly made her groan out loud.
She was going to get years’ worth of fantasies out of this experience, if she happened to live through it.
“Okay, fine. Now you’re dressed. So you can lead me to the up arrow.”
He shook his head as he crossed the mosaic tile toward her in a few long strides. “I would like to believe that I would release you if I were able, in spite of the dark desires of the Other inside me, Keely. But I’m not entirely sure how we got here, since the power of transport has never been one at my command until now.”
“But—”
“I don’t know how to use it again.” He stopped, mere inches away from her, and stared down into her eyes, his own spiraling with vivid blue-green flames. “Unfortunately, the staircase that leads from the Temple to this cavern was blocked by rock and dirt in a cave-in some years ago. There is no way out.”
Chapter 17
Keely had never suffered from claustrophobia, thankfully, even after some of the more outrageous treatments various shrinks had subjected her to in childhood, such as the sensory-deprivation tank that only lasted one session.
They hadn’t known an eight-year-old could scream that loudly.
But the news that she was trapped with Justice in an underground cavern—underground in Atlantis, and no way did she want to even think about the possibility that the whole shebang could spring a leak or something—took her to a whole new level of psychosis.
Her breathing sped up to hyperventilation, and she started trembling, fluctuating with each shuddering breath between fury and panic. “You . . . you . . . Are you insane? You brought me to a cave—underground—with no idea of how to get back out again?”
He raised one dark eyebrow. “Most caves are underground.”
“I know that! I’m an archaeologist, you—”
Ignoring her sputtered words, Justice lifted a hand as if to touch her. Oh, no. Not going to happen, whether he was sex on a stick or not. She jumped back out of his reach, clutching her head in her hands and inhaling deeply. Tried to calm down, so she could think rationally about a plan. A plan, that’s what she needed.
Not random, useless terror about what the archaeologists of the future would think when they found her crumbling bones lying beside a pair of gloves, another skeleton, and a damn sword.
She belatedly realized that her fingers were twined in her hair. Her bare fingers. “My gloves! What did you do with my gloves?” Her breathing sped up again until her lungs burned inside her chest.
He silently pointed to the floor near the pallet where she’d slept. She backed away from him and bent down to snatch them up, but he moved with that eerie, inhuman speed and caught her wrist before she could pull the first glove over her hand.
“Why, Keely? Why the gloves? Do you feel they offer you some protection?” A grimace twisted his face. “Am I so terrifying to you?”
He released her wrist
and crouched down, then stood up with his sheathed sword in his hands. Before she could protest, deflect, or take any evasive action at all, he shoved it into her arms.
“Take this, then. Take the sword I’ve worn for so long it is a part of myself, and use it against me if you fear me so much,” he said, his dark eyes and roughened voice coated with ice. “To kill a man, press the pointed end here.” He placed his palm flat on his chest, over his heart, but it was too late, too late.
Too late.
The hilt of the sword fitted itself into her hand as though it were seeking her. Seeking her knowledge of it. She had a fanciful notion that it was laying claim to her mind, even as Justice had laid claim to the rest of her when he’d brought her here.
Soon there was no room for thought as the weight of ages crushed the whimsy, crushed her defenses. Ages of time and eons of violence. Violent, bloody death splashing through the unprotected corridors of her mind.
“No,” she tried to protest, even as the resonance of the sword’s history beat her into submission. “No, no, no. Too much, too much. I can’t . . . my gloves . . . I can’t—”
“Keely!” He called out to her, but the sound was muted. Muffled. Yet again, he caught her.
Held her.
But it was too late. She fell, screaming soundlessly, into the blackness of her own personal void. As she fell, she looked into his eyes and managed one final sentence.
“I can’t survive it.”
Keely smashed into the reality of the vision with actual physical pain. A great wrenching and tearing of the fabric of her existence manifested itself in the searing pain of broken and bleeding flesh, oddly focused on her face and throat.
She gasped and fell back, her attention captured by the floor—a very different floor than the one in the cavern. This floor was brilliantly white marble, inlaid with designs of gold and copper and another metal, similar to copper, but sparkling and almost gem-like. The wrenching pain began again, and she realized she might not survive the vision. Pain like nothing she’d ever felt wrapped around her throat as though it had been crushed. She gasped, wheezing in a breath, but a moaning cry came from farther into the room and she looked up to try to find the source.
